Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Super Moms and Super Food

My hat goes off to the Pew organization for utilizing a
special holiday, Mother’s Day, to push its unscientific agenda.1 I must comment on super Moms as I am
married to one! My wife homeschools 8
children, runs two businesses, cares for 3 aged parents and puts up with me.
Also, we raise two or three “natural” pigs a year.

What I can assure you is that Mom will use antibiotics when
any of her babies need it! People forget
that farming is like running a maternity center and/or a nursery. Animals get
sick just like kids. Therefore we need to be prudent in our antibiotic use.
This is my message to veterinarians and mothers.

Preventive use of antibiotics can be prudent. After the
second child in our house is diagnosed with “strep throat” the doctor will
leave an open prescription for whoever in the house may need it, thus saving
another doctor visit; reducing our health care costs. The same is done on the farm. If the
veterinarian can anticipate the disease outbreak, they may prescribe medicine
for the entire group. This prescription
can reduce the total amount of product used on the farm and reduce the number
of dead and suffering animals.

Of course, most Moms are also concerned about the safety of
food for their “flock”. I hope they
understand that healthy animals are an important means to deliver safer meat. In fact a report came out last week
highlighting the inextricable link between animal health and meat safety.2

Some might argue if animals and my multiple kids, for that
matter, were not raised in such high concentration, they would not need
antibiotics. That is just not true. I
bet if you asked only Moms who had never used antibiotics to attend the
“protest” it would have been a thin crowd.